The People's Business Posted by David Shorr

We're policy wonks, right? So we have beliefs about what goes into policy making, what sound decisions require, and what constitutes good preparation to govern. Which is why I was disappointed to see Tod Lindberg -- a friend and a duly credentialed specialist on the other side of the political spectrum -- parroting flimsy talking points on Barack Obama and Sarah Palin's relative qualifications for high office:

Let's get this straight: Your party has just nominated for president a fellow who has been elected exactly once to the United States Senate, in an uncompetitive race, following a garden-variety stint in a state legislature. And your response to the GOP nominee's choice for vice president--someone who has been elected once as governor following a stint as a small town mayor--is to decry the lack of experience?

What we have here is resume math of the crudest kind: Obama and Palin have roughly the same years of service as elected officials. The factor that's missing from Tod's calculation, of course, is how those years were spent, i.e. the content of their preparation. In foreign policy terms, Tod must be applying a deep discount to service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The entire exercise is obviously not terribly meaningful, which is why I was surprised to see Tod conducting it. Among other things, this approach doesn't grant much credit to the effort Tod himself has invested in developing his expertise.

Luckily, we have David Brooks to referee this dispute. Brooks reminds us of the anti-intellectual tradition in American populism. As he describes this view: "book knowledge is suspect but practical knowledge is respected. The city is corrupting and the universities are kindergartens for overeducated fools." The really interesting thing, though, was to see where Brooks himself comes down on the issue:

I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.

And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills.

Personally, the last eight years has taught me the urgent need to reconnect the voting public with the debate over American foreign policy. I believe wholeheartedly in the capacity of voters to understand and give the mandate for the major issues of the US role in the world. I have spent much of the last four years here in "flyover country" talking about these issues with anyone who's willing, in small cities and small towns. I've also devoted many posts on this blog to affirming many of the public's common sense instincts on foreign policy.

But as David Brooks says, governing is actually serious business. And no, Tod, only after he or she has done her homework, can any American boy or girl, as the old saying goes, "grow up to be president."

Comments

[Peace]

The main difference between Palin and Obama is that Obama actually has a interest in the world. Obama has over 200 foreign policy advisors on his campaign and he has actually lived in another country. Moreover Nelson Mandela was one of Obama's heroes and Obama has met with foreign leaders round the globe. This contrasts with Palin whose own view of the world seems to be around Wasilla where she "could see Russia," and her own high school in which she chooses cabinet members.

[osage]

Forgive me for preferring someone who graduated from Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations, and from Harvard University, where he was intelligent and competent enough to be elected the President of the Harvard Law Review where he managed a staff of 80 editors, and who taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School for 12 years over someone who obtained a degree in Communication-Journalism after attending five colleges and had to hire a city manager when elected Mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla because she didn't know how to do the job herself despite the fact that previous Wasilla mayors had performed the duties of city manager themselves. The idea that Sarah Palin is anywhere near as intelligent or as knowledgable as Barrack Obama is is patently absurd. And the argument that her "experience" as mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla and governor of Alaska, a state on only 680,000 people, doesn't quite compare to the "experience" of being an Illinois state senator and Illinois U.S. Senator who cut his teeth in Chicago's incredibly competitive and complex political environment. Sarah Palin couldn't have gotten in to Columbia University or Harvard. And her celebrity is based on her looks and her religion rather than her intelligence or her knowledge. Shame on me for thinking that intelligence does matter......that knowledge does matter......that being the best and the brightest does matter. Shame on those who think that a pretty face and a religious extremist value system make Sarah Palin's lack of intelligence and knowledge unimportant and uncessary. Talk about dumbing down and lowering the standards of American governance!

[Zathras]

Democrats have been missing the point on this subject so consistently that I'm beginning to wonder.

Sen. Obama's problem is that the great majority of Americans who do not vote in Democratic primaries or follow politics closely as part of their professional lives have only an indistinct idea of what is important to him and how he would govern. A lengthy "resume" -- documentation of extensive experience in work related to that of the Presidency -- would help, but he doesn't have one. And he's not running as the experienced candidate anyway.

In the absence of experience, how does a candidate give voters a clear idea of what is important to him and how he would govern as President? Well, he could just tell voters to go read the statements on his Web site. Or, he could explain to voters why they should be frightened by a Republican ticket that would be "worse than Bush." Telling people how scared you are is a great tactic. Maybe the way to undercut Gov. Palin's appeal is to remind women that Palin is not really one of them, because she's against abortion.

Look, this is not easy, but it is also not complicated. Democrats in this campaign have taken George Bush's unpopularity, and the reasons for it, for granted. They have used stylized rhetoric about "Bush's failed policies" and run ads with McCain and Bush in the same picture, and think that's enough to get their message about McCain across. And that's the problem -- they are running this race as if it were primarily a race against McCain. American voters may not like the campaign McCain and his people are running, but this isn't going to make them any more sympathetic to Obama, A. Man. They. Do. Not. Know.

A national politician new on the scene is best able to define himself if he has a point of reference. Ross Perot did it brilliantly with no resume of elective office at all in 1992. Ronald Reagan, with the "are you better off" question in the 1980 debate against Carter, did it with many voters in an evening. The Washington that refused to deal with the deficit in 1992, and the floundering Carter administration in 1980, were not nearly as unpopular as George W. Bush is now, not even close. And they hadn't been as unpopular for as long as Bush has been.

So why are Obama and the Democrats running against McCain instead of against Bush? Partly, I suppose, it's because they are just doing what Democrats always do -- get a candidate whose loyalty to all the organized interests that dominate the Democratic Party has been proven during the primaries, and hope for the best. It could be that they are counting on a superior get out the vote organization to sneak Obama past the finish line first. They might remember how the last two elections featured voters who thought Bush was more a "regular guy" than the stiffs (forgive me, but Al Gore and John Kerry just weren't very good candidates) who emerged from the Democratic convention.

What they haven't appeared to grasp is that people are sick of Bush. It isn't just a matter of his policies, or his mistakes. They've tired of him personally. His penchant for big empty talk, his stonewalling and shielding himself from tough questions, the amount of time he has spent just goofing off at the ranch and at Camp David, all of it: they think he's been a screw-up, and they think people willing to say otherwise are nuts or worse.

In American Presidential politics, a President of the other party who has been sitting at 27% approval ratings for a good two years is as good as it gets, if you're running for President for the first time. It is Christmas morning, the puck on your stick in front of an empty net, a 60-mile-an-hour fastball over the heart of the plate. And, specifically, it is all Barack Obama needs to define himself to voters, a reference point that most voters already know they've had enough of.

Americans are worried about health care? George Bush has treated those worries with neglect and indifference. The economy? All Bush has cared about is giving tax cuts to his rich campaign contributors -- a straight economic transaction, they gave his campaign money and he gave it back to them many times over. Iraq? Republicans rally around Bush, who created the mess the military has had to bail them out of. Honor and dignity in the White House? Emasculated Cabinet officers, sleazy campaign operatives spread throughout the government, a President under the thumb of his Vice President, Justice Department employees who can't even go after criminals without risking their jobs, a permanent campaign, a culture of coruption, a Me Generation Presidency.

One question answered -- what does Barack Obama care about -- leads to another question: how would John McCain be different than George Bush? The ideal time to get busy on these questions would have been three months ago, when Bush's Republican party had itself a nominee it had always regarded with suspicion. McCain has since shored up his support among strong Bush Republicans by picking Bush-in-a-skirt for his running mate. But the question about McCain still works: if he says he'd follow Bush's lead he alienates voters who've decided they don't like Bush, and if he doesn't he irritates his strongest supporters.

Right now, Barack Obama is running against John McCain, and John McCain is running against Washington. In a different environment -- say, one in which the last eight years had never happened -- a veteran, well-known, well-liked Senator beats a black guy new to national politics ten times out of ten. But in that kind of environment Barack Obama wouldn't have started his campaign in the first place. He is only a candidate because the incumbent Republican President and his administration have done so badly. The incumbent Republican President is Obama's greatest asset. So far, he and his campaign haven't used it very effectively.

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